Glory In The Name

awake so he could snap at him. It was a sickly climate in the Mississippi Delta, and it made him irritable.

He mounted the ladder that ran from the great cabin directly up to the quarterdeck above and stepped through the scuttle and into the black night. He closed the scuttle door and stood motionless for some time, letting his eyes adjust. The great cabin had been dimly lit, but even that was enough light to render him quite blind on deck.

Damned dark tonight…

The wind was out of the north and blowing a steady five knots or more. It wrapped itself around Pope’s heavy, sweating frame, gave him a chill, raised goose flesh on his arms, but it felt good. Over the sound of the shovels and the rattle of coal spilling down the chutes and into the bunkers, Pope could hear the swamp sounds, the thousands of frogs and insects and Lord knew what else, chirping away at their nightly choir.

He advanced to the rail, which he could just barely see, and only because the inboard bulwark was painted white, and leaned against it, staring out into the night. The wind carried on it the brackish smell of the river and the smell of rotting vegetation and smoke from some far-off place. He looked east to west but could see nothing beyond blackness from the shore.

The Head of the Passes, the two-mile-wide convergence of the channels leading in and out of the Mississippi. New Orleans was second only to New York in the amount of shipping that flowed through. Or it had been, anyway, before the Rebels set about destroying themselves. It was staggering, the amount of river traffic that had crossed that spot of water on which the Richmond was anchored.

But now, with the blockade having brought waterborne commerce to a halt, on that black, moonless, hazy night they might as well have been riding at anchor halfway between the earth and the moon, for all the activity that Pope could see. It was unsettling, that wild, foreign delta all around, harboring snakes and alligators and diseases unknown to a Northern man like Captain John Pope.

“Lieutenant…” Pope made his way forward, to where he could see the outline of Lieutenant James Whitfield, silhouetted against the tiny bit of light thrown off by the lanterns on the schooner and down in the hold. Suddenly Pope did not care to be alone on his own quarterdeck.

“Captain?” Whitfield turned, and his voice sounded a bit startled, and Pope wondered if the swamp and the darkness were unnerving the luff the way they were him. “Is everything all right, sir?”

“Fine, fine. Can’t sleep. This damned heat down here. Man isn’t born to the climate, he can hardly tolerate it.”

“Yes, sir. And it’s not even the heat so much as the humidity.”

“You’re right, Lieutenant. I hadn’t even considered that.”

Pope looked forward, down the length of the deck, which was just becoming dimly visible as his eyes adjusted to the dark. The Richmond was a big ship, 225 feet long, forty-two and a half feet on the beam, displacing 2,700 tons. A sister ship to Hartford, and heavily armed. She drew over seventeen feet aft, which made her less than ideal for river work, but Pope was not going to complain. He had worked hard, had spent many years in the navy, to rise to command of such a ship.

And Richmond, at least, was a steamer, her twin screws driven by two horizontal condensing engines, sixty-two-inch cylinders, each with a thirty-four-inch stroke. The other ships of his squadron, the Preble and the Vincennes, were entirely sail-driven, making them considerably less adequate for river work.

The thought of the other ships under his command made Pope lift his eyes from his own deck and the line of big, black nine-inch smoothbore Dahlgrens like sleeping bears at their gunports, and look outboard again.

Off their port side and downriver was the sloop Vincennes. Pope could see the dull loom of a lantern on her deck. She was one hundred feet shorter than Richmond and less than a third of the bigger ship’s tonnage, but with her four eight-inch guns and fourteen thirty-two-pounders, she was still a powerful man-of-war. Certainly more ship than the Rebels could muster.

Pope turned, looked forward, past the Richmond’s starboard bow, though in the dark he could hardly see even the black shrouds angling up the Richmond’s masts. He moved his head a bit, to make sure his vision was not blocked by the rigging. One hundred and fifty yards upriver he could see a single pinprick of light, a lantern on the deck of the sailing sloop Preble. Just the one light, and the enveloping darkness, and the sound of frogs and insects and the lap of water around the hull.

“Well…” Pope began, then stopped. He had heard a noise. A shout? He cocked his head.

Then another shout, loud, an order being issued, but he could not make it out. The furious beat of a drum, feet pounding on the deck. Pope looked around, trying to find the source, but he saw only Lieutenant Whitfield, who met him with eyes wide.

The sound was muted, far off, but insistent, something happening.

“The Preble!” Whitfield shouted, pointed forward. A red light was moving aloft with awkward jerks as it was hoisted to the peak of the gaff.

“They’re beating to quarters!” Pope shouted. He looked around his own ship, unsure what to do. The night had the quality of an anxious dream. What was happening aboard Preble? Pope felt the first inkling of panic creep over him. He had once considered posting picket boats upriver-why had he not?

“Beat to quarters, sir?” Whitfield asked, and he sounded no more composed than Pope felt.

“Yes, yes, Luff, beat to quarters!”

“Beat to quarters!” Whitfield shouted, and suddenly the deck was alive with racing men, men pouring up from the hatches, running to the big, sleeping guns, casting off breeching, men racing to their battle stations even before the startled drummer was able to find his sticks.

“Port side, Lieutenant! A steamer, port side!” a voice shouted up from the waist, and Whitfield and Pope both rushed across the quarterdeck, hit the rail, peered outboard and forward.

The night seemed to be exploding around them, from dead still to wild bedlam. Pope turned to a midshipman who had appeared beside him. “Pass the word to light off the boilers! I want steam up, now!”

“Aye, aye, sir!”

“Sir!” Whitfield pointed out into the dark. A white, undulating wave, the bow wake of a vessel, closing fast, and above it, great roiling clouds of black smoke, visible even against the night’s sky. But between them, no vessel that Pope could see.

“What the hell…” Pope muttered, then shouted, “Gunners, run out!” and the air was filled with the rumble of twenty big guns hauled bodily up to the bulwark, and then, again from the waist, a voice shouted, “It’s the ram! It’s the ram!” and Pope sucked in his breath and stood frozen on his spot of deck.

The ram! Reports of this terrible machine had been floating down from New Orleans for months, so many and so differing that Pope had ceased giving them any credence.

The ironclad ram!

“She’s gonna hit!” came another voice from forward. Pope leaned over the rail. The white bow wave was frothing wildly, the smoke coming thick from the stack, rolling down over the quarterdeck, and with it the peculiar puffing sound of a high-pressure engine. He could see her hull now, unlike anything he had ever seen floating and built by man. A round black hump, a whale back, a stack like a column standing straight up.

“Dear God…”

And then the ram hit, drove itself into the Richmond’s side, making the ship shudder as if from a hammer blow. The fasts holding the coal schooner parted with the impact, bang, bang, like a series of rifle shots, and the schooner pulled from the Richmond’s side, swirled away downstream.

They could hear the working of the ram’s engines, a terrible screeching and banging. As if something terrible was happening within the iron turtle.

Lieutenant Whitfield turned to another midshipman. “Find the carpenter, tell him to check the damage, report back!”

“Port side!” Pope shouted. “Fire!” Wildly, in ragged order, the Dahlgrens blasted away, throwing great long arms of red-and-yellow flame into the dark delta night. Pope saw part of the ram’s stack blown away, but there was no chance of hitting the low-lying vessel itself.

The gun crews fell to reloading, and Pope did not stop them. His eyes were glued to the ram, the horrible ram, backing away, slipping down the side, coming aft, coming for him. It gleamed in the light of the muzzle flashes and battle lanterns, a terrible black monster, and Pope felt frozen to the deck, unable to move. He could not take his